Spatial effects in dynamic conditional correlations

The recent literature on time series has developed a lot of models for the analysis of the dynamic conditional correlation, involving the same variable observed in different locations; very often, in this framework, the consideration of the spatial interactions is omitted. We propose to extend a time-varying conditional correlation model (following an autoregressive moving average dynamics) to include the spatial effects, with a specification depending on the local spatial interactions. The spatial part is based on a fixed symmetric weight matrix, called Gaussian kernel matrix, but its effect will vary along the time depending on the degree of time correlation in a certain period. We show the theoretical aspects, with the support of simulation experiments, and apply this methodology to two space–time data sets, in a demographic and a financial framework, respectively.     

University Quality and Labour Market Outcomes in Italy

Abstract. This paper uses proxies for university quality derived from Performance Indicators to evaluate the impact of university quality on the early labour market outcome of a cohort of recent Italian graduates. Institutional research quality is found to have a negative effect on the probability that both male and female graduates will be overeducated. Additionally, research inputs are positively related to men's wages. In contrast, teaching quality does not appear to enhance students’ economic success.     

Governing Local Area Development through Dynamic Performance Management

Public Organization Review - Several attempts of local areas development fail due to a predominant attention to the internal performance of public organizations. The perspective of local area...     

《凤子》中反讽的各个侧面（下）

在《凤子》中,沈从文破除了归隐的基础、文化预设、物质可能和终极目的,涉及的是归隐的不可能性。沈从文以反讽为特色的隐士的归隐应当被理解为哲学和神秘意义上的归隐。沈从文的所有思考经过了反讽的筛选都被改头换面了,反讽性的超脱,相对于严肃的彻底超脱只是局部的。另外,这是一种双重的超脱：一方面,作者虽不乏公民与政治意识,但这却不成为一种崇拜;另一方面,生命的张力和对知识的相对化阻止了向神秘主义的转变。沈从文的人物并不逃避,他们生活在现实中。从根本上,沈从文将一个以极端化为特色的时代加以相对化。     

Aging society,health and the environment

In a general-equilibrium OLG model with endogenous longevity, a political economy and a social planner solution are contrasted mainly with respect to public supplies of health care and environment protection. The latter is relatively more supported by the young because its beneficial effect on longevity takes more time to occur but then lasts longer; while the old relatively prefer health spending. With population aging, political claims for health care expenditure are self-reinforcing. This framework is able to generate a quite rich set of results. In the political economy larger health care/consumption and health care/environmental quality ratios are implemented. Changes in risk aversion, production pollution, health inputs’ elasticity of substitution may have opposite impacts across regimes. More complete annuity markets improve welfare. Further comparative statics is analyzed.     

Population dynamics and life-cycle consumption

This paper presents a model where aggregate consumption depends on both the level of wealth and the age structure of population. The explicit consideration of an endogenous rate of time preference permits to analyze the important role of population ageing as a determinant of aggregate saving. Received: 23 October 2001/Accepted: 13 February 2002 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for his comments. Financial support from CNR and MURST is gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

The Gini concentration test for survival data

We apply the well known Gini index to the measurement of concentration in survival times within groups of patients, and as a way to compare the distribution of survival times across groups of patients in clinical studies. In particular, we propose an estimator of a restricted version of the index from right censored data. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the resulting Gini statistic, and construct an estimator for its asymptotic variance. We use these results to propose a novel test for differences in the heterogeneity of survival distributions, which may suggest the presence of a differential treatment effect for some groups of patients. We focus in particular on traditional and generalized cure rate models, i.e., mixture models with a distribution of the lifetimes of the cured patients that is either degenerate at infinity or has a density. Results from a simulation study suggest that the Gini index is useful in some situations, and that it should be considered together with existing tests (in particular, the Log-rank, Wilcoxon, and Gray–Tsiatis tests). Use of the test is illustrated on the classic data arising from the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group melanoma clinical trial E1690.     

A new spatial shift-share decomposition for the regional growth analysis: a local study of the employment based on Italian Business Statistical Register

This paper presents a new shift-share model to decompose the employment growth rate of a territorial unit by taking into consideration the association between industry mix and firm legal status effects measured in its neighborhood. We explicitly consider this kind of association to go beyond the problem of asymmetry found in a previous work. The empirical application refers to the data collected in the Italian Business Statistical Register and, in particular, regional employment figures in Friuli Venezia Giulia (NUTS2 level), for 219 territorial units (LAU2 level) and 12 Local Labour Systems (LLS), for the years 2001 and 2004.